Margaret Street, London W1

All Saints

In 1970 Sir John Betjeman, the poet, writer and enthusiastic advocate of heritage and architecture, visited All Saints Margaret Street as part of a television programme he was making about Victorian Architecture for the BBC. "It was here, in the 1850s, that the revolution in architecture began...It led the way, All Saints Margaret Street, in church building."

All Saints is hidden just to the north of Oxford Street. It was built in the High Victorian Gothic style by the architect William Butterfield and completed in 1859….and I have to say it is not really my cup of tea.

The following extract is from the church website which explains the background to the building of the church (http://www.allsaintsmargaretstreet.org.uk/history1.htm)

The church owes it origins to the Cambridge Camden Society (from 1845, the Ecclesiological Society) founded in 1839 with the aim of reviving historically authentic Anglican worship through architecture. Its monthly magazine, The Ecclesiologist, reviewed new churches and assessed their architectural and liturgical significance.

In 1841, the society announced a plan to build a 'Model Church on a large and splendid scale' which would embody important tenets of the Society:

The project was supervised, and largely sponsored on behalf of the society, by Alexander Beresford-Hope, who chose the architect William Butterfield (1814-1900) to undertake the project. Butterfield designed nearly 100 churches and related buildings during his long career, including the chapels of Balliol College and Keble College, Oxford, and built in a highly personal form of gothic revival. All Saints Margaret Street remains his masterpiece.


Butterfield's style is what has become known as "structural polychromy" – ie using coloured materials (especially stone, bricks and tiles), to create a building where colour and pattern are inherent in the structure. Thus All Saints was faced externally in pink and black brick. Its spire (at 227' or 69m, the second highest in London) is hung with slates but banded in cream ashlar.




The chancel occupies almost one-third of the length of the church. The reredos was completed by William Dyce in 1853-9, but suffering the effects of London air, was copied by Comper in 1909 on wooden panels in front of the original.



The tiled panels on the north wall were erected in 1873, at a cost of £1,100 in memory of Upton Richards, the first vicar. The tiles were designed by Butterfield, painted by Alexander Gibbs and manufactured by Henry Poole and Sons. The poor picture below shows one of the panels which depicts the nativity




The glass in the west window dates from 1877 and was designed by Alexander Gibbs. It is based on the Tree of Jesse window in Wells Cathedral.



The pulpit, by Butterfield, c1858, is adorned by brilliantly coloured geometrical mosaics which adorn it, comprising Derbyshire fossil grey, red Languedoc, yellow Sienna and Irish green marbles.



The font is also by Butterfield from a similar date to the pulpit. It stands on eight coloured marble columns with an elaborate bowl, and carved angels on the broaches.